Circle of Pearls
by waterlit
Summary: They meet again before the end: they whiled their lives away, age after age after age. Burtonverse, AliceHatter.


Disclaimer: I own nothing (:

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The wind blew icy cold against his sallow cheeks, and the White Queen studied him with clipped eyes from across the table. The tea wasn't doing anything to warm either of them up, and only his reverence for Her Majesty prompted the Hatter to emerge from his miasmatical despair for a second.

"Your Majesty, you don't have to suffer here with me in the bitter cold."

The queen smiled softly in the wintry dusk, and caught a tiny snowflake in her pale hand. "Look, Hatter, see how each snowflake is different!"

The Hatter turned a tearstained, ache-stained glance toward Mirana.

"Hatter!" The queen exclaimed, "Come back to the world! Alice wouldn't want to see you like this."

"And Alice is not coming back." The Hatter returned mournfully and clamped the lid of the teapot down on the squealing dormouse.

_The girl of his dreams – his mad, mad dreams – had stepped into the future with a drink of potent wishes in her hands and he had really, really wanted to grasp her wispy form in his broad fingers and beg her to stay. But she was gone and he was not and he stood alone beside the White Queen on the dusty terrain of the Great Battle…_

"She will be back someday. Every encounter will be different, but in the end, each permutation will slowly draw the two of you towards the end of the labyrinth you have been treading for centuries!" The Queen remarked and the stars in her eyes twinkled like the silvery night sky.

"She will?" His voice was raspy, like the croak of a frog which had just emerged from the dusty depths of an abandoned well.

Mirana smiled at him, her dark eyes flashing midnight black in her kohl-lined eyes. He watched those dark, painted lips open and close and felt like a fish listening from underwater. She smiled her soft smile, that kind, darling smile and took his hand.

"She will be back," Mirana said, "You must remember that string of pearls you gave to her once in a memory of yesteryear."

"No." He looked at the White Queen (Ween? He thought and frowned at his unfunny joke) and twiddled his hat between his hard thumbs.

"You gave her a string of pearls." Mirana smiled encouragingly, but he could see the itsy bitsy bit of impatience tugging at the sterns of her eyes. "You have made a promise to her, and she to you; you will meet again before the end."

"We will?" The Hatter asked, not quite believing her words, because he really truly did want to, and because there was nothing quite like hope deflated.

"You will, as surely as you have met and then been torn asunder ever since the birth of the sun." The queen patted his arm and took off into the white mist curling around her palace.

The dormouse rattled the sides of the teapot and popped his head out. "I told you so!"

[][][]

When they first met, it was not yet November (time was not reckoned in months yet, nor in eternities, but rather, it was likened to a string of pearls, always round and always there).

He was a man and she a woman and they stood together at the cusp of the infant world and locked themselves into each other's salty embrace. He built her a hut and she stoked the fire and swept the floor and they made the most out of each other. He hunted mammoths with the other men and she sewed animal skins into fearful attire like the other women.

They were happy once in a lonely land that now lies broken under the sea.

Then the barbarians came and he, with the other men, dashed out to fight. But he pressed a string of pearls into her clammy hands before he left, taking the time to fumble a chaste kiss and taste her oyster lips like he'd never before.

"I will be back," he promised, "I will. We will meet again before the end!"

And then he wasn't there anymore. She sank down in her leopard skin dress and wept, clutching at the air and smelling his dry, grassy scent.

She didn't weep when his body was brought back and laid in state along with the other fallen heroes, but when the pyre was lit she leapt straight into the fire with the pearls left buried in some distant corner at the edge of the world.

[][][]

When they next discover each other, he is garbed in long robes and she tends the everlasting holy fire as a priestess dedicated to the goddess of the hearth. They are from two different spheres, and never the twin shall meet.

But he walks past the forbidden temple and sees the dark-haired girl bending over, her skirts sweeping the floor. Her eyes are lined with doubt and misery; loneliness is her constant companion and tears string her eyes. He helps her and she smiles a blinding smile that pierces his heart. He hands the pearls back to the lovely young woman and from there, everything goes downhill.

They meet under the sacred tree at midnight and explore each other; he kisses her and tastes a whiff of the cold air at the beginning of the world.

"Do I know you?" He asks and she merely smiles and leans into his embrace, her toga trembling against him.

But they are caught when her belly grows round and big, swollen like watermelons at the end of the rainy season. The priests and priestesses cry foul, delving into ancient laws and tracking his crime. He is quartered and drawn and hung and cast off the high walls for committing religious treason.

She tiptoes out of her cell when night falls and sees his dead body perched atop the city walls.

She clutches her pearls and slides headlong into a nearby well. Never mind if she poisons the water – what happens after death won't hurt her. They find her the next morning, bloated with sins and chock full of water and they hang her upside down from the wall, alongside the body of her dead lover.

But the fields of Elysium saw them not together, for he and she were always apart in that sunny land under the soil.

[][][]

They reprise their roles as tragic lovers sometime again in the future. She is but a simple village girl with curls that glisten in the sun, and he is but a farmer with a farm to tend.

They meet under the sun, and they chat and he offers to her a pretty string of pearls his mother left behind. She blushes and shyly accepts; he courts her with bluebells and smiles and handsome eyes that lavish praise on her.

But fate is relentless in her pursuit of her victims, and life is vicious in its entrapment of man. The soldiers march in with their proud swords and loud trumpets, as they have so many times throughout history. She hides and is taken by enemy fire. He finds her hidden in a bush, insides spilling out and he kisses her full on the mouth and tells her to wait for him on the other side.

Her eyes close; he is alone with a battered corpse. In time to come he turns himself into a religious holy man, a guru with flaming red hair. He walks the earth and feeds on happy memories and waits for his end to come.

It does come, in due time, but his days are long and his eyes are dim and his ears hear only her dainty whispers like the wind in the cornfield. These days are hard to live through, but he clasps the pearls he gave her close to his heart, kissing them with chapped lips stained cherry-brown and prays for them to meet before the end.

[][][]

"Tell me," He asks with bitter words hanging in the air, "Tell me, darling, do you love me?"

_Because I could break the sky open for you, if you'd just say the words. _

Now he is a hatter whose days are filled with straw and felt and cloth, and she is but a pretty village girl who has caught his roving eye. The girl looks up; her hair, dainty as the morning stars, glints as it catches the snatches of warm sunlight breezing through the leaves. She smiles thoughtfully and winds her fragile fingers through his coppery hair.

"You know the answer, I think."

"I'll make you a beautiful hat," he says to her, "with roses and everything you love."

"I can't pay for that!"

"It's a gift to my love." He winks at her and envelops her in his warm arms. "Where to?"

"Your heart." She laughs and falls lightly into his embrace.

[][][]

It is winter, and the ice trembles down chimneys. She visits him in his little shack and finds him among his hats.

"Will you stop being a hatter?" She asks, curious.

"No." He grins at her, his green eyes dashing. Flashing.

"Why are we in love?" She asks, breaking the silence imposed by the staccato tick tock tick tock of the clock.

"We are. That is all that matters."

"Why is a raven like a writing desk?" she asks and turns her pretty face up to him.

"I don't know…" He looks at her, worried.

She attempts the question again. "Why is a raven like a writing desk?"

"I… don't know!"

"Why? Why?"

A long pause settles, like the dust in a desert between two oceans.

"Perhaps…"

"No, no, don't say it!" She stops him before his answer can come out. "I don't know what got over me."

"Do you want tea?"

"No, no, I'll leave now."

The wind blows the door shut, and it occurs to him, as the golden hair disappears behind the white wind, that he didn't quite kiss her goodbye.

[][][]

_oHoH the wind calls_

Turn inside out!

[][][]

It was January when he next got the courage to visit her. Beating back grief and distilling sorrow he crawled his way to her wayward grave, the stone under which she would sleep for all eternity.

_I should not have let you go in the wind_, he thinks, _I should have persuaded you to stay!_

But the dead are unloving and whisper only taunts in the ears of those who seek them.

The torments of the years and the redness of his hair break him through the lonesome days. It is the time for life, but he decays, withers, teeters.

"Strange freak, strange freak!" The children call.

He looks at them. "Why is a raven like a writing desk?"

His shouts carry for miles around, but when he looks, all the windows are shuttered. No answer comes back, but somewhere beyond the stars he can see her winking mockingly at him.

[][][]

He dug and dug, looking for roots, hiding from the swords and sharp points that had hurt him twice. The baying of hounds spurred him on; long fingernails crusted with mud and painted the colour of the sunset forced their way through layers upon layers of caked dust. Then he felt it; cold air bursting forth from within the earth.

A chasm opened, and he fell through. He screamed and expected to breathe his last, though there was nothing he could hear but the whizzing of the air; there was nothing he could see but the empty black surrounding him. He awaited the crack that would break his spine.

But it didn't come. When he awoke a dormouse was sitting looking at him, and a lovely woman draped in white smiled at him as he tried to sit up in a bed far more comfortable than any he had ever seen.

"Who're you?" He asked. "Where am I?"

"I am the White Queen." The vision in white smiled gently. "And you fell through the rabbit hole, right into Underland."

"Underland!" He looked shocked.

"Underland. And you are?"

"I…" he stared wonderingly at his hands. "I'm the Hatter."

"Welcome to Underland, Hatter."

That was how he came to be wrapped up in the matters of Underland, with the light of the real sun shafting above his red, red hair.

[][][]

_And it will come to pass…_

In this life she was Alice and he was the Hatter who had lived without the companionship of Time for eons of eons.

Round about the table he went, tipping steaming tea into cups (and oh, he hated how the teapot never emptied!), teasing the dormouse and jibing the Cat. But he never felt whole enough to seek Time's forgiveness; _I will wait till my darling comes again_.

She skipped in her dress and tumbled down the same rabbit hole (_same old, same old_) one fine day.

When they finally met, he looked up from the teacup and gaped at her fair face. She was still a child, true, but he knew deep down that it was her who was lady of his dreams and queen of his unchanging heart.

"Who are you?" he asked, for even the obvious are sometimes questionable.

"I'm Alice."

He could have jumped for joy, had the dormouse not started breaking plates and throwing scones. He chased the furry thing around and around in a pretty little circle, and Alice plopped down into an available chair.

There was a veil falling over him; it dulled his senses and kept his mind wholly on Alice. Had she always been this intriguing? His memory stirred and flicked through eternity, back to the days at the edge of the world. A tiny little something, a seedling perhaps, of love rekindled and re-passioned, blossomed in his lonely heart, and her eyes, too, glittered with a strange fire.

It hurt when she left.

It hurt even more when he was called before the Queen of Hearts and told to give evidence that might potentially deliver Alice to the clammy hands of Death. He loved, therefore he lied.

When night fell and his wounds hurt as he lay face down back at the meadow, he salvaged his hurt with the memory of seeing Alice going away back to her world, back to safety and security and liberty.

[][][]

She was not amused when he stuffed her into a porcelain teapot.

Pushing slightly upon the lid, she clamoured to be let out, but was shushed by his hurried explanation. When the soldiers left and she had suitably attired herself, she found that she remembered the Hatter as he was.

He walked her as far as he could, his heart thumpthumpthumping against his veins, and she found that she rather liked his eccentric company.

"Why is a raven like a writing desk?" he asked her, fully aware that she could not remember the trappings of the past.

"I don't know. Why?"

"I don't know either." His face fell. _Because she – you didn't tell me the answer._

[][][]

The Jabberwocky was a strange bird, with glistening scales and eyes that oozed venom. How could his fragile vase stand against those polished wings and screeching skies?

It was a long battle that turned the skies black, streaked red at the sides, dusting the horizon with tears and an epiphany of despair and futile hate.

Then it was over and she came to him, hands shyly tucked behind her. Mirana came over to deliver the crushing blow with a bottle of potent liquid.

Alice took it.

"Won't you stay?" he asked pleadingly, a thousand questions in his bright green eyes.

"I have some matters to settle. I will be back!"

She was gone in a whirl of dust, and he couldn't see anymore for the tears pooling in his liquid eyes.

[][][]

"Hatter!" Alice flitted toward him, looking more radiant, more beautiful, more _his_ than ever.

"You came back!" The Hatter swept her into a deep embrace.

"I said I would…" Alice smiled and locked her fingers tight in his hair. "I missed you."

"Ohhh, Alice…"

"And… I think I found something that has belonged to us since the beginning." Alice drew a pearl necklace out from her pocket. "Remember this?"

"You found it!"

The Hatter stretched his long fingers across the taut, smooth skin of his very own pale goddess.

_We have met before the end._

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A/N: This is long! I rarely write such long oneshots heh :O

Yeahh about this; again, Resmiranda provided the source of my inspiration. I was struck by the awesomeness of her fic Orobouros (Inuyasha) and wanted to see if I could possibly do something of the sort. I've no idea if I've succeeded (I hope I have, by just a teeny bit) but it was fun writing this! The reincarnation thing was too good to pass up.

Yepps hope you enjoyed this; do review if you please! (:


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